Physiology in our public schools / By Albert Leffingwell.

  • Leffingwell, Albert, 1845-1916.
Date:
[between 1900 and 1999?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiology in our public schools / By Albert Leffingwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    L ^^^ Among men of science, the study of the mental and physical peculiarities of young children has excited, during recent j^ears, no little intel-est. It has been discovered that if we take the pupils of any large public school and study them carefully as individuals,— physically, mentally and morally,— we shall find in each class a certain proportion below the normal standard. The sight ma}^ be imperfect, the hearing may be less acute ; there are malformations of body, or confusion of colors; of all these defects a certain number will be found in every class-room. Test the mental capacity. Every teacher knows that in scores of cases the bright pupil is not over- diligent or the dull scholar blame-worthy for his stupidity; that in quickness of perception, ability to grasj) and comprehend, tenacity of memory, some scholars will be far above the average ; while on the otlier hand, some will be found abnormally below it, dull of appre- hension, quickly forgetful, difflciilt to arouse, or to interest in any mental work. A step or two below the mental state of some pupil,— and the teacher admits that the border-line of sim- plicity or semi-idiocy would be nearly reached. The difference in moral sensibility^ among the young is found to be equally well marked. No two pupils have precisely the same repugnance to wrong-doing in any direction, or luanifest the same sense of honor and love of truth, the same hatred of cruelty, or the same tendency to sympathy. Just as a certain proportion of children are below the average in physical development or mental capacity, so, too, a definite proportion are imperfectly developed morcUly; and in many cases need but slight excitement to have aroused within them impulses to cruelty, vice and crime. They are '■^ psycliopatldcs; a term which Prof. James of Harvard University employs to denote an inborn aptitude to immoral actions in any direction. This aptitude may not be always awakened; doubtless in many cases, by education and continual normal environment it is gradually outgrown; but if it be once fairly aroused,— so that a sense of gratification is incited by wrong-doing, there are no exces- ses of cruelty and crime to which these psychopathic children,— these moral imbeciles,—may not go. And curiously enough, it is very often in the direction of cruelty — the injUction of p)ain — that the first incitement is directed. Now before a class of pupils in a public school, suppose you illustrate the lesson by dissection of a rabbit or a cat, killed at that time and for that purpose. It is possible that the majority of students might have their attention fixed only upon the facts of anatomy thus illustrated. But to some others,— children quite as likely as otherwise to have been most carefully trained, and to be the objects of most tender solicitude,—there irill come sloivly